LibGuides: UGS 302: Social Movement Organization / Wright: How to develop / refine your topic

Manageable research topics

Did you receive feedback on your topic proposal that you need to get more specific? Narrower? More focused? That you need to 'unpack' something? This feedback can be addressed with some background information searching.

Look for the following:

controversies - why do people care and what are they arguing about?
people - who has been impacted and who is offering solutions?
unfamiliar terms, works and concepts - often the most promising leads are what one might call 'bycatch'. This is when you set out to find one specific thing, but you catch a bunch of new and strange things instead. These may be conversations to investigate because, often, they are coming up in your search results for a good reason.
dead ends and forks in the road - sometimes your first idea is not your best idea - what initially made you curious was a dead end. But rarely did you not learn something along the way. As you learn more about your initial topic, be ready to give up on it and pursue new leads.

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The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements by David A. Snow (Editor); Sarah A. Soule (Editor); Hanspeter Kriesi (Editor); Holly J. McCammon (Editor)
ISBN: 9781119168553
Publication Date: 2018-11-28
The most up-to-date and thorough compendium of scholarship on social movements This second edition of The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements features forty original essays from the field. With contributions from both established and ascendant scholars, the Companion seeks to present current research on social movements in all its diversity. It is the most up-to-date, comprehensive volume of social science research on social movements available today. The essays address: facilitative and constraining contexts and conditions; social movement organizations, fields, and dynamics; strategies and tactics; micro-structural and social psychological dimensions of participation; consequences and outcomes; and various thematic intersections, including the intersection of social movements and social class, gender, race and ethnicity, religion, human rights, globalization, political extremism and more. Offers an illuminating guide to understanding the dynamics and operation of social movements within the modern, global world Covers a diverse range of topics in the field of social movement studies Offers original, state-of-the-art essays by internationally recognized scholars The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements is recommended for graduate seminars on social movement and for scholars of social movements worldwide. It is also an excellent text for college and university libraries, especially with graduate programs in the social sciences.
The SAGE Handbook of Resistance by David Courpasson (Editor); Steven Vallas (Editor)
ISBN: 9781473906433
Publication Date: 2016-12-19
Chosen by Library Journal as one of the best reference texts of 2016. Occupy. Indignados. The Tea Party. The Arab Spring. Anonymous. These and other terms have become part of an emerging lexicon in recent years, signalling an important development that has gripped many parts of the world: millions of people are increasingly involved, whether directly or indirectly, in movements of resistance and protestation.However, resistance and its conceptual "companions", protest, contestation, opposition, disobedience and mobilization, all seem to be still mostly seen in public and private discourses as illegitimate and problematic forms of action. The time is, therefore, ripe to delve into the concerns, themes and legitimacy. The SAGE Handbook of Resistance offers theoretical essays enabling readers to forge their own perspectives of what "is" resistance and emphasizes the empirical and experiential dimension of resistance - making strong choices in terms of how contemporary topics related to resistance help to rethink our societies as "protest societies". The coverage is divided into six key sub-sections: Foundations Sites of Resistance Technologies of Resistance Languages of Resistance Geographies of Resistance Consequences of Resistance